I'd like for things to be different, but only sandbox chars are fun because I make them so

Jul 26, 2014 18:43 GMT  ·  By

During my years of gaming and plowing through the comment sections of various media outlets, I noticed something that I perceive as worrisome. Most characters that you get to play as aren't very fun.

The “silent and strong type” that seems to be the avatar of choice for every mass-murdering game out there is also an incredibly dull and dimwitted virtual persona, and most games don’t allow me to crush people’s limbs and heads with a sledgehammer in order to express that dimwit personality somehow, like I used to do with Hulkina in Fallout 3.

That for me is a pretty big problem, because as games tend to be an escapist medium, I want to play as someone else other than me, preferably someone who is more interesting than I am. Silent protagonists that behave like well-mannered cannon fodder don’t make the cut unfortunately, and I have always appreciated the fact that you can always cut someone open if you don’t like the way they talk down to you while giving you a quest in Skyrim.

That silent approach has also snuck its lazy tail in the storyline department, with ambiguous and lazy efforts at creating mystery like Dark Souls being universally acclaimed for the fact that they don’t have a storyline.

That unfortunately is not the result of some writing genius deciding that slowly uncovering the story through toil will be more rewarding or whatever their excuse is, it’s the result of several people not being able to do their job and invent a proper universe to serve as setting for the adventure.

The same is the case of the silent protagonist. You can more easily identify with Gordon Freeman, the labcoat-wearing nerd who just so happens to have a knack for grenade-jumps and mass murder, without even flinching when snarks are chasing him down, attempting to eat his face.

I hope I won’t ever have to face an army of exploding bugs like my avatar did in Half-Life, because I can’t guarantee that I won’t break down when it comes to becoming a one-man army in order to save mankind.

Therefore, I can’t identify with the ridiculous premise that I am a scientist who is better at shooting people than a team of professionals are, although I remember the sequence where you had to take out the jarheads quite fondly.

This becomes a problem in games that everyone loves and admires, such as Mass Effect. The main reason people like silent protagonists is that it’s easier for them to identify with the virtual chum.

But how could you possibly identify with someone that is so boring he can’t even torture people when they don’t give him what he wants, when he is clearly saving the universe and being a good sport about it too?

This could have been fun, if not for the universe existing for its own sake
This could have been fun, if not for the universe existing for its own sake
If it’s okay for any government to do it, you should be able to do it too. Mass Effect is built on the premise that the military decided to take action before getting the go-ahead from the leaders back home, who were arguing over who should take credit for the victory, in the unlikely case that we don’t all die, of course.

How can you accept such a blunt instrument to be the best soldier in the universe, blindly following orders and not putting two and two together, when the story of his origin is forged in the fires of disobedience and being able to be proactive, assessing a situation and moving in decisively without having to phone home to ask permission?

Image how cool these games would have been if you could play as someone that is actually fun. Go to the old lady, ask her politely for the information you need. Use your ungodly skills of persuasion. Should that fail, play Russian roulette with her until she stops being both useless and alive at the same time.

Perhaps that is because I never make a character that resembles me in any game I play. I want to be someone different in any game, and if I can make a duo with me pulling the strings and Deadpool doing the talking, that’s fine and dandy.

I know that history will not remember my name, and I want to play as memorable characters that feel like real, intelligent and even mischievous people in the right circumstances, and given the option, that do the most absurd and over-the-top things possible, not content to be mister Serious-Pants.

I usually like to choose a character type, such as the bleak Hulkina, who doesn’t understand anything about life and can’t make sense of the woes of regular folk, and who instead uses her hammer to smash her enemies to pieces, because she feels that it’s all the same whether she gives them a flower or a hammer to the head. Smashing all those heads after you snipe supermutants from a distance is tedious, but it allows my Fallout 3 character to be herself.

In Fallout 2, Barbarianzor was an Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonator that, like Conan the Barbarian, was born in strife. His credo was that we must all fight against those who would do us harm in any way, and he punished the towns that allowed discrimination and slavery by killing all the children, the hope of the wastes.

He believed that the slaves were guilty of accepting their fate instead of embracing a dignified death, and the slavers were guilty of breaking the wills of others, shaming them by stripping them of their pride and humanity. He was not good or evil outright, he was merely consistent, and inflicting suffering upon those he saw as being in the wrong was his way of making sense of the world around him.

That being said, the limited options offered to me in games like Dark Souls, that are about nothing, and where you can’t torture people for answers that condition your progress, are extremely boring. A huge amount of potential that goes nowhere.

I want a game where after one character inevitably betrays you, you can tell him that you already set fire to his village out of spite because you saw it coming from a mile away, and then proceed to make a drinking cup out of his skull. Which you then present to other characters you meet, if they strike you as the traitorous or ulterior motive type. Unless you’re in space, where people are more civil.

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This guy was about as bright as a total eclipse
This could have been fun, if not for the universe existing for its own sake
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